Corporations have many disparate new and old or existing applications that generally have been developed as stand-alone functions. Information technology systems, for example, may have been written by or for the accounting department, the shipping department, or the order entry group and often have different designs and user interfaces, different applications, and run on different platforms. They also are often stored in many different, and different types of, data bases.
The stand-alone functions can require different interfaces and login identifiers for each function, the use of multiple network navigation functions (i.e., searching for the applications), multiple menuing systems and specific knowledge of each application in order to know when and how to use them. This results in "islands of information" in any enterprise. The consequences of this can be lost opportunity, reinvention and rework, and unproductive time spent searching for data and other information about the enterprise and its human, tangible, and intangible resources and assets.
One of the principle tasks of system integration is to integrate disparate databases, applications, and platforms into one system that is accessible to desired enterprise employees. Almost without exception, in these situations many established software systems that may have already been installed are replaced by systems that fit within the integrator's new integration scheme. Presently, it is not possible, without rewriting or replacing all the existing systems, to integrate the different applications and platforms inside the corporation. Unfortunately, when this occurs, there is the need to retrain the employees who used the previously existing systems.
With the conventional methods of integrating the need for different software systems to be useable by different users for many different applications, many other limitations also exist. For example, the existing enterprise applications and platforms are not network connectable using the various protocols, such as TCP/IP that permit communication on networks. In addition, the many applications and platforms that an enterprise uses in their present state require different and separate passwords.
Moreover, even though a system integrator may provide new software systems for an enterprise, there is yet a great deal of information on different databases in different formats that either does not become incorporated into the system or that does not become usable in a common or integrated format. Also, different interfaces are necessary to integrate the different applications and the different platforms. In fact, even with the best of system integration products and services, there is no ability to provide to employees and other users a single comprehensive user interface that provides an automatically updated, up-to-the-minute view of the information and processes occurring within the enterprise across its many different applications and platforms.
Consequently, there is a need for a method and system that permits use of the numerous applications and data, including platforms that are disparate.
There is a need for a method and system that permits a user to avoid the unnecessary complexity and frustration of having to logon to every single system of a wide-area or other network, with a separate password for each logon operation.
There is the further need for a user interface providing a single menu that permits authorized users to access all information that an entire corporation holds.
There is the need for a method and system that permits local application execution from a remote application library, even in the instance that the remote application library includes functional, structurally, and substantively different data bases.
There is yet a further need for a method and system that provides users the ability to interface numerous intelligent and non-intelligent interfaces at the enterprise level and execute different applications on multifarious platforms.